


The day that was not a day

by DragonLdy



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angel is bad even with the soul, F/F, F/M, PTSD, Shanshu Prophesy explained, Stockholm Syndrome, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-02-04 01:14:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12760092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonLdy/pseuds/DragonLdy
Summary: Time travel is not possible, all the soothsayers and sorcerers and  demons who tried desperately in the first years of the collapse to undo the damage explored the idea of time travel but found it to be an impossible dream, this hell was the world they lived in now and there was no going back. However Illyria is stubborn and time means little to her so she never stopped searching until she found something that might change what happened. Buffy has been sent back to just after Thanks Giving to when Angel had a day turned back by  temporal fold but she now has over forty years of painful memories of loneliness and war and has to pretend that she is eighteen again and face an irate tied up Spike. Can she use her knowledge of future events to stop The First Evil and make an evil vampire fall in love with her?





	1. Chapter 1

She looked over the desolate waste that was once a fertile land. Now it belonged to the demons and the First; everything did. It wasn't her world anymore and she often wondered why she stayed. There had been portals in the beginning, for years there had been Key Masters offering new worlds with new possibilities and the poor refugees from the demonic wars had run if they could, they were fools chasing pots of gold at the end of conmen's rainbows or atleast that's how she had always thought of them, now she wasn't so sure. Those first years had been so full of loneliness and regret as she went through the motions every day, pretending she gave a damn about whether that potential or this did her routine right, trained hard enough or died trying. But then the potentials weren't potentials anymore they were slayers, full of confusion, fear and angst at being chosen, everyone else had had so much hope in those early days and they all looked to Buffy to lead them, Buffy who was little more than a girl herself in some ways. Hope died quickly after the internet fell and all electricity and technology after that. They used to say that every society was only three meals away from anarchy. They were right but it was the information that really led to rioting and all out looting; no internet, no information from the president or other countries or other towns more than a day's drive away. She had felt dead inside in those last days of Sunnydale; dead even before she woke up in that coffin and dug her way out of that cursed grave, the only thing making her feel remotely alive was his arms, his touch, his lips and when he had died she had spent months wishing she had stayed in that crater with him, burnt with him. He had taught her to live again but she had taught him to die, she would drag him into heaven or argue with any higher beings on his behalf; demon and soul because she had loved them both and they had both more than earned eternity together. 

 

Now that the world had ended and she had lost any lingering affection for the people she had known in Highschool and the man who she had revered as a Father she could admit to herself that she had loved him, she could finally admit it to herself and this empty world; she was the vampire slayer, she killed demons and vampires for years and she had loved him, the Slayer of Slayers. She regretted not taking his hand and proclaiming it loud and proud for all to hear, she regretted not grabbing onto every small chance of happiness she could find and clinging on to it for dear life but she hadn't, she'd been a coward, afraid of what her holier than thow friends would think or do to her. In the end it hadn't mattered anyway, after all of her sacrifices and her self denial they had still turned on her, still cast her out of her own house. She had made him into her dirty little secret; treated him worse than a whore, beat him when the mood took her fancy all in some twisted attempt to keep the others from finding out the only thing in this world that she found bearable was him and after he was resurrected in LA he didn't come for her. He was finished with her and why not? It wasn't being the slayer it was being her, they always left her in the end until she decided to leave them. She hadn't meant to leave permanently; she had meant to stay in touch with Dawn who had gone off to college but while she was picking through the ruins of LA and trying to find anyone who could give her answers the technology went out and England and the rest of the world was suddenly much further away than a phone call or a trans-atlantic flight.

 

Now she looked out at the sea, where she was she didn't know, on the West coast of America somewhere, the damn nuclear wars and opened portals had totally messed up the atmosphere and it had been decades since the sky had been blue (blue like his eyes) the sea was an almost matching shade of dirty brown but there was just enough sunlight to keep back the Turok-Han though she could tell it would soon be dusk and then they would come for her as they came every night. Buffy continued to wipe her blades and tried to prepare herself. She was going to die tonight; he told her once that when a slayer died it wasn't because she was facing an incredible opponent it was because she was having an unlucky day while they were having one lucky day. She had been luck for forty years but never felt it and tonight she died but there was no point arguing with a dead man's theory. Drusilla's dust mixed with the sand around her. How cruel they had been to him over his love for the vampyress, how cutting her remarks and heartless her jibes, she had had a soul yet she had said those things to a heartbroken man and justified it to herself because inside he was a demon. Yet Dru had been her greatest ally these past decades, the two had travelled together and held each other through the most bitterly dark nights, the Turok-Han and the First had proven to be the great equalisers and suddenly all the battles that had come before, all the morals and beliefs that had existed in the society that once was became meaningless; it was the earthlings verses the creatues from beyond, who sought to completely destroy every trace of humanity in the world, of which there were many and Buffy had been strangely pleased to see that she was not the only Slayer to develop romantic feelings for a vampire as she met many more as the years passed. 

 

Tonight Dru and she had searched for shelter and she had thought it odd that Dru brought her to a flat empty beach when they needed somewhere they could defend but Dru had held her arms out and started to spin around to music only she could hear and the two women embraced one last time before the vampiress met her first sunrise in over two centuries. She had begged her not to, begged her not to leave but Dru insisted it had to be now and it had to be here. So now she sat on the dirty beach alone watching her last sunset, she had wanted to kill herself many times in the past but she was afraid that would prevent her re-entry to heaven so she had fought the good fight, bought others precious time with her fighting skills and now here she was a sitting duck awaiting the end, alone, always alone as the first Slayer told her she would be.

 

"The sunsets on this planet got more colourful after the A-Bombs were dropped." Illyria remarked nonchalantly as if appearing out of nowhere and remarking on the view was normal, which for the hell-god it was. For the woman that used to be called Buffy and who had spent decades with a vampyress who was never quite in this moment or on this plain it seemed a perfectly acceptable beginning to a conversation. 

 

"Yes the reds and pinks are quite lovely, haven't seen you in a few years Illyria, been busy?" She didn't really care what Illyria had been doing but she had been alone all day and was lonely for conversation, even the kind you get with slightly mad gods.

 

"I have travelled many worlds but I keep coming back to this one, have you never considered taking a portal out of this barren place?" Illyria asked her, it was an old question and one she had answered often.

 

"I'm the Chosen One, wouldn't be right if I tucked tail and ran while other people got left behind." It was the practiced answer she often gave.

 

"Is that the real reason or just an excuse?" 

 

"An excuse, the real reason is I'm afraid the heaven I'll end up on through one of those portals won't be the same as the heaven I'd get to here, I have a lot of people i plan to see again in this heaven." A shadow crossed her face as she thought of her little sister; poor unstable ball of pure energy, while they lived over the hell mouth and the spell was new she was a young teenage girl and then the years passed and the fabric between worlds were constantly damaged by refugees being ferried to safer, greener pastures and then she had eventually reverted back to her natural state. Buffy knew when it happened; first gradually and then quickly the false memories of her childhood were broken down and the real ones came to the fore and then one day a ball of green energy was hovering above her bed. Dru could see it all the time but Buffy could only catch glimpses of it out of the corner of her eye, it followed her everywhere and nearly everyone else seemed unaware of it, it was behind her now, still bound to her by whatever remained of the original spell that sent it to the slayer to protect it. She had spent many years wondering what the hell she was supposed to do with it or how she was supposed to do anything to it, was it still her sister? Had her sister's soul gone to heaven or had she ever had one? They had been strangers at the end and Dawn had been so bitter with her emotionally unavailable sister that sometimes she was relieved Dawn hadn't been sent to her in human form again.

 

"And a lot of people you plan on shouting at when you get there." Illyria said knowingly.

 

"Yes there will be a lot of shouting." She said with a smile, the end was near and her luck had finally run out, she would finally die and be free of this hell she'd been living, her hands shook with anticipation.

 

"You're the last you know."

 

"The last what? The last slayer?" It didn't surprise her, she had been out of contact with the activated potentials for decades-.

 

"No, the last human on this world, the rest have died, a few have fled but even they have all died on their new chosen worlds." She went very still and very quiet, she knew it wasn't all about her and to think so would be narcissistic but she couldn't help but be angry, would it have been so hard at the end for just one person to be alive because of her and all that she had done? Now that she was going to finally lay down her arms? After all the decades she had been fighting and killing she was going to die now with nothing to show for it, not on scrap of the world better for her having lived in it, it made her want to cry with rage.

"Well, that is something... I guess, thank you? For keeping me company?" She said uncertainly, she never knew how to talk to Illyria at the best of times.

"I am unhappy with this, I liked the humans as a whole; so creative, not like the Torak- Han or the First who only know how to kill or destroy and so many demons have died out without humans to feed off of." Buffy nodded sympathetically while her mind went to another place, Dru had often put her in a trance when she fed off her and let her believe she was talking to her Spike again,that she was pressed up against his lean body and feeling his cool lips but she still held onto memories,the real memories like they were precious. Many of them were in his crypt on various surfaces and in various positions, she had rarely been that nice to him but had had fun and a few laughs if only she hadn't been so stubborn and admitted what was in her heart, not just to him but to herself. Illyria's facial expression was unreadable as always.

"So many humans wished there was a way that they could go back and fix things, they wished they could go back to a better time, a happier time. What do you wish Chosen One?" The Old One asked of the Last One.

"What does it matter? The only ones who could grant wishes were vengeance demons and they starved to death or left this plane decades ago. Besides I was never wronged, not really, he only did to me what I had done to him and I had done a lot worse than that." Buffy replied knowing that Illyria would know which him she was talking about, they always talked about Spike when they got together.

 

"I liked Spike, as did the shell. He always went in fists first, I respected that but he was not the one that wronged you that I was thinking of." The Chosen One looked at her in confusion, "I speak of Angel." The human woman scoffed at the god dismissively.

 

"Him? I never think about him anymore, not like i did when i was a girl he seduced and used, I don't want to waste my final minutes thinking of him and all the tears I wasted, all the times I closed my eyes in anticipation of his kisses, shame on me for closing my eyes so tight, for not seeing what he really was. Loving him was one of my worst mistakes, he ruined what I could have had with Spike, it was his voice I heard in my head telling me it was wrong, loving a soulless monster was wrong, that I deserved a normal life and I listened to it, it was the hate and secrets for him that festered in my friends all those years that jeopardised our relationship. I should have grasped happiness with both hands and held on tight, not thrown it away and wasted it." There was still such pain in her voice even after all these years.

 

"There is a way to send you back." A new voice said from behind her, the woman jumped at the unheeded approach, no one should be able to sneak up on her like that.

 

"The rules of magic forbid it, I know several tried during the first years of the Fall, you can't turn back the clock much as you may wish to." The woman said warily as she eyed the old demon, "Hello again D'Hoffryn, I haven't seen you since..."

 

"Indeed, indeed, bad business that, if only I had known what was to come. My vengeance demons were family to me but The First only saw them as living evidence of demon's  
co dependancy on man. I am the last now." He said sorrowfully.

 

"I'm sorry, I'm the last too, according to Illyria." The woman said, feeling genuine sympathy for the demon, she had learnt to see the bigger picture much more clearly over the last few decades of carnage, bloodshed and loss.

 

"She's right, you're the last human in this dimension or any other the rest got old and died if they weren't killed and of course there were no new humans. I need to show you something, Illyria found it by chance and showed it to me, we've put our heads together and we do think there's a way to change it, to go back, not for us but for you." D'Hoffryn's face was grossly demonic and hard to read but Buffy could see the faint traces of hope in his eyes.

 

"How could that be possible?" She asked with wide eyes, it had been so long since she had felt hope, her heart hammered in her chest and nearly distracted her from the painful hunger in her abdomen, food was a luxury she hadn't indulged in in a long while.

 

"There was a day that was not a day, a day that was turned back by twenty four hours, you were not permitted to have any memory of it but Angel was, we can send you back to the moment it was turned back."

 

"Which day was it? I don't understand what happened on that day that was so bad that it had to be reversed? Why was he the only one that could remember it?" She asked confused.

 

D'Hoffryn shared a look with the Old One and an orb appeared in the air with images on it, they showed her all that happened that day from her perspective as it would have been.  
Angel had become human, they ate ice cream and spent the day in bed. He left, she woke up alone, afraid, she left messages on his phone, horribly reminded of the last time she had woken in his bed alone, unsure what she had done to make him leave this time and worried that somehow Angelus had come back despite his beating heart. She found him, he'd gone demon hunting alone, leaving her, the slayer, sleeping peacefully in bed for some reason. Then she found him killed the demon, he went off alone again, shutting her out, speaking to her like she was a child he came back to his apartment later to tell her it was over, the day was rewound, he could have held her in his arms and kissed her for that lat minute, he could have made her truly happy for their last minute together but he told her, he watched her break down in tears and beg him not to do it, he took her in his arms then and gave her comfort, comfort for the pain he was causing her. He had reasons and excuses, he gave her less than a minute to understand what he was saying, to comprehend the decision he had made without even talking to her first. But what horrified the most, what turned her stomach and made the bile rise in her throat was the look on his facee as time reversed and he stood in his office looking down on her with this patronising, knowing smile and acting as if he had done this great noble deed. Then the images swirled and showed him the conversation he had had with the oracles "I like time," the female had said, "there is so little and so much of it."

 

As the sunset over the last human the Torak Han who were slowly closing in on her and creeping out of the shadows listened to her screams of pain and anguish.

 

"Wish Granted" Said the demon standing before her. 

 

Illyria smiled knowingly and turned to the horned demon when they were alone, "Angel was a good fighter when he was steered in the right direction but he really didn't understand that prophesy at all. Every decision, every step they took lead to this, this desolate waste, this barren land, if he had taken a moment to realise it wasn't all about him and her he would have seen it, The First was planning the corruption of the little witch for years and getting her to perform that evil, powerful curse was the first step that she took on the long road to destroying humanity, it was dabbling in dark arts like that that eventually led to her breaking the laws of life and death, because of her no new babies were born in this dimension or in others with human inhabitants and none of them saw it, they all assumed The First would kill them face to face not influence them quietly from afar and then sterilise them out of existence. The Shanshu prophesy was what kept him on the straight and narrow for so many years, without it he would have given up the good fight and the Powers did not want that. I think they deliberately made it confusing to serve their purposes and make him their warrior, it said that after the final battle was won the vampire with a soul was made human but bring time travel into it and the fact that the prophesy was translated half a dozen times and that it was originally made by a mad hermit who only drank hallucinogenic substances and it was pretty accurate." 

 

"Except for the part about the final battle being won." D'Hoffryn said with a frown.

 

"Look around you, it was won, just not by the people we were rooting for." She replied sagely.

 

"Good point and I've never met anyone with accurate visions who had them in sequence so I suppose that explains the misunderstanding of him turning human after the battle as the vision included evidence of him fighting in it as a vampire. Prophesy and time travel, time travel and prophesies, all of our fate's now rest on her shoulders, Gods help us all."

 

**************

 

Buffy stood in front of him looking as she had the morning before or this morning he supposed, she was annoyed that he had gotten the scoobies to lie to her and come back to town to see her but it was for her own good even if she couldn't understand that. Instead of continuing the little talk about boundaries she was silent and standing very still as she looked around the room and then finally at him.There was something wrong with her eyes, they had always been full of longing and pain but now there was...rage?

 

Murderous rage? She sprang at him and attacked him, he had been unprepared for the assault and had never been very good at hand to hand combat, preferring weapons. The green demon with the red crystal in its forehead jumped through the window and Buffy knocked him out with a high kick then went back to hitting the vampire in front of her. 

 

"You never loved me! You only ever loved yourself! You only ever wanted me to suffer as you suffered, you're no different from Angelus who used to stalk and terrorise his victims only you think you're so much better than him because you have a soul! Because you think you're so fucking capable of love?! You don't even know what love is!" She kicked and hit him to emphasise every word and threw him onto his desk that broke at the sudden impact before she went in for her final act and scratched out his eyes. He flailed helplessly at her and tried to defend himself but with one shoulder dislocated and the other arm broken in several places it was pretty hopeless and she scratched out his eyes with grim satisfaction, grimacing at the gunk now under her fingernails. She hit him in the jaw again before he had a chance to speak and then held his face down on the table and away from her so she could speak into his ear nice and clear for him to understand her. "If I ever hear of you coming to Sunnydale again or conspiring with my friends against me I will cut your balls off." Wish granted and fulfilled Buffy Summers walked out of the office and into the sunlight. The street was bright and busy with people and she nearly cried when she saw a baby in a pram for the first time in decades.

 

The demon watched the exchange from where he had fallen from her kick and then made his escape through the window. He did not always understand why the Powers That Be sent him visions or asked so much of him but he knew when his purpose had been served. 'The sacrifice must be willing' that is what the signs and portents had told him and although he did not understand how he had been shown that by attacking the vampire today he could save all of mankind but now he saw the temporal shift in time in the room and around the young woman he could see that this plan had been far more complicated than he had thought, what ever great purpose his death would have served was surely done now, somehow. He would follow this woman warrior, this Slayer and aid her in her quest in any way he could, the rune reading he did immediately after leaving the offices of the vampire said that this was his best course of action.

*******************

Buffy had a little bit of trouble finding her way back to Sunnydale as it had been so long since she had had to rely on public transport and she kept getting distracted by the beautiful sights and scenes playing out before her. She couldn't remember where her Father had lived but she remembered where Giles had lived, she took a wrong turn occasionally on her way there but got there in the end. He would be in there she knew. The man she loved but didn't yet love her, she remembered once saying that her hitting him was like first base for him and that was probably why he was attracted to her but this Buffy couldn't hurt him like that, couldn't do that to him, but there were other ways she would get him to love her again and if she couldn't do it the natural way then she'd 'chain him up and torture him 'till he did', she smiled as she remembered him saying that about Dru all those years ago. Having spent many years with the mad vampyress Buffy had a much better understanding of that statement,sometimes she could only sleep well if Buffy hurt her just right, preferably while pleasuring her, neither woman had been particularly interested in women but when they had to join forces in the first years after the fall they had to try to guide and unite the humans, demons and vampires that were under them and get them to listen to them for their survival it was better to be united in order to achieve mutually beneficial truce between all the groups and the sex wasn't bad, Drusilla was a beautiful woman.

 

When she was a teenager and had had Spike chained up and at her mercy she had been so cruel and cutting, she had had no understanding of the tortures Angelus had once inflicted on Dru, how he had conditioned her to believe pain was love and love was pain, bile rose in her throat as she thought of the similarities between Angel and Angelus's courting practices, they were both very skilled at breaking a girl and making her feel isolated and alone and like he was the only one in the world for her, leaving her things and watching from a distance as the pain washed over them. Angel didn't know how to love and if she had been more mature or experienced when she first met him then she would have seen him for what he was. The displays of tenderness interspersed with displays of insecurity and possessiveness. How he could always find her or contact her but she could never phone or contact him. They had been together for months before she even found out where his apatment was. She still didn't know what he had done for money, at the time she had thought it rude to press him for information since he had been so guarded about it. Wasn't that disturbing in itself? The most common question you ask someone when you meet them is what do they do for work but he had so carefully shrouded himself in mystery that she had felt it rude to question him about it. He had told her he was a demon hunter but who did he hunt demons for? Who paid him and how much? How come she never got paid for her services? She definatey killed more demons in high school than he did.  
Her thoughts were confused and unfocused as she tried desperately to remember how to behave as she had forty years ago, everything was so different, little things that her younger self had taken for advantage like a flushing toilet made Buffy want to cry with joy, she had to get a hold of herself.

 

Buffy felt clean and new like she hadn't in a long time and not just because the body she was in had enjoyed the full benefits of running water and sanitation in the last twenty four hours but because she had finally gotten over the controlling conniving man who had overshadowed so much of her love-life. She had finally given Angel the ass kicking he so desperately deserved for turning the whole world to shit as well as her life, she took a deep breath and focused on that calming fact as she walked up to the door.

 

Now all she had to do was knock on the door, she had faced armies of demons and monsters from beyond her worst nightmares but knocking on this door and going in to where he was tied up, to where he would look at her the way he was going to look at her. It made her heart ache, mal de couer, she remembered an old woman in one of the shelters telling her that was what was wrong with her, the woman was mostly human and New Orleans had greater defenses than just the physical kind. She had liked living on the Bayoo for a few months but nowhere stayed safe in the new world for very long and the little house on legs over the swamp had been washed away like so many other safe havens. Finally she worked up the nerve and knocked on the door, Giles opened the door after a few moments and welcomed her in with a warm smile, she had to remind herself that this was not the Giles who betrayed her, this was not the Giles who kept Spike's resurrection from her and told Andrew to do the same, this was not the Giles who conspired with Robin Woods to murder Spike, this was not the Giles who abandoned her for her own good after she was ripped out of heaven, this was not the Giles who voted that she should leave her own house that had become a refuge for so many potentials and that she should go out alone into the night. This was not the Giles who suggested they kill her only sister, her last living family member a few short months after they had stood over her mother's grave.

 

This was not that Giles and to judge him as such would be unfair but he could become him and that terrified her.

 

"Buffy, how was LA?" He asked hesitantly as she stared at him for an uncomfortable amount of time in silence.

 

"It was... I got a lot of rage out of my system." Giles frowned at the statement and motioned for her to come in. Everything felt oddly familiar and at the same time strangely different.

 

"OOh I hope you took some of it out on Peaches after the crap he pulled-" Spike piped up from the chair where he was tied up.

 

"That's enough Spike!" Giles snapped as Spike was about to get going in his rant. 

 

"Thank you Giles for being so protective of me and my delicate feelings." Buffy said in a way that showed she clearly wasn't impressed with Giles's outburst and walked past him to the kitchen while glancing shyly at the tied up vampire in the corner. "I picked up some blood at the butcher's, figured you'd be running out, what microwave setting should I put it  
at?" Spike told her the settings and watched her as she carefully poured the blood into his mug. He had always enjoyed watching her, he had spent hours reviewing tapes of her  
fighting and knew how she moved; subject to change depending on her mood, this was different though there was a wariness to these movements and there was a look she had given him when she came in, it had been...different to what he had been expecting.

 

"Is everything alright Buffy?" Giles asked as he gave a pointed look in Spike's direction as if he was unsure about having this conversation in front of their prisoner. For the first time Buffy really looked at the ridiculousness of the situation; Spike was completely at their mercy, tied up, unable to feed himself, perhaps his feelings for her had just been a symptom of Stockholm Syndrome, he had been their captive for a long time after all and later had felt he couldn't get along without them. The thought made her stomach churn, was the 'love' he had felt for her really a symptom of a psychological disorder she had given him? She could feel the blood draining from her face at the thought. It was so similar to what Angelus had done to Dru all those years ago to warp her mind and make her his slave but that would make Buffy no better than Angelus, her vision blurred and she hit the floor before she even realised she was falling. Giles was at her side in a moment helping her up. "Buffy? Buffy? Are you alright?" he asked in concerned whisper. as he kneeled beside her.

 

"Yeah...just thinking, you know?" She swallowed nervously and got up then turned back to the microwave to watch the digital numbers counting backwards, it had been so long since she had seen digital neon lights on anything, they had seemed like a distant fairytale at the end. A time when technology seemed like a fairytale and monsters were a reality, "I've been thinking a lot about our commando problem and I think I have an idea about how we can find out more about them, Spike? your sense of smell is pretty good right? I mean would you be able to recognise the guys that took you based on their smell alone? Or maybe you remember a few of their faces?" Spike considered for a bit and worked his jaw muscle in that way only he could, his face had always been so sculpted yet expressive; a marble statue come to life, her breath hitched slightly in her throat as she watched him and he instantly looked at her with raised brows his nostrils flaring as he sniffed the air. He would probably never admit it to the Slayer but his sense of smell was very good even among other vampires he knew he was something special, able to track game over any distance and one aspect of his keen nose that he would never share with her was how good she smelt, he smelt it all; when she was premenstrual, when she was in a good mood and when she was aroused, it was one of the most distracting things about when they were fighting each other, their bodies moving to a dance only they knew the moves to, making it up as they went along yet matching each other almost perfectly, he had never killed her no, but then she had never killed him and every time her panties were soaked with her arousal, the scent of it wafting toward him with every high kick. As she walked toward him now carrying the blood she had bought for him, heated by her own fair hands he could smell it and smell her. As ever she had the sweetest scent and his keen eyes saw the difference in her walk.

 

"Yeah I probbly could but these guys were professional; the cells had solid white walls and drains in the centre for washing away blood, very official looking, I wouldn't be surprised if they have pictures of me and are looking for the lab rat that got away. I ain't risking going back to that place Slayer." She felt her knees go weak at hearing his nickname for her. 

 

"Aha! Well that's where my cunning plan comes in," the Slayer gave him a playful smile before she launched into her plan and it struck something inside him. She had never smiled at him before, they had had playful banter during fights and occasionally she had smirked at him knowingly but she had never smiled at him. It felt nice to be smiled at like that...by her. "... are you listening?"

"Yeah, yeah I was just hungrier than I thought, what were you saying again?" He hurriedly gulped down the mug of blood to cover his embarassment and watched her throat as she talked. He could hear the blood in her jugular as it flowed to her brain, he could hear the steady rhythmic thump of her heart and he could hear the intake of air in her lungs as her diaphragm expanded and diminished. It takes a lot of self control for a vampire to be around humans with their blood filled bodies constantly giving off noise, heat and smells, as they reacted to every stimulus around them. That was the mark of a master vampire, to be able to be in their presence and keep the demon at bay and even among master vamps he had an incredible amount of self control to be able to stay focused on the words coming out of the slayer's pretty mouth as her panties were getting soaked in arousal and her pupils dilated every time she looked at him, they were signs a human wouldn't notice but a person as perceptive as him would; she wanted his body.

 

Giles left to answer the phone as he negotiated his price for his help, she had a lot of good ideas like how Spike had been on the campus when he was taken so who ever these guys were they probably lived close to where they worked ergo they should go to the campus bars together.

 

"Is this your way of asking me on a date Slayer? Gotta tie the fellas up to get them to go out with you now?" He smirked trying to get a rise out of her, he was dependant on them for food and shelter but damn it he was still a vampire. She smirked back at him before replying;

 

"Even if I did have to tie them up first you'd be the last man on earth I would ever date." Buffy stood and went to her bag, aware that by turning her back she was giving him a nice view of her ass, it was the truth he would be the last man she would ever date, there was never any man after him and she had only been with Dru because it was the closest to him that she could find.

Giles came in then from taking his phone call and gave her a strange look. "I jut got an irrate call from Cordelia in LA, apparently you're possessed by a demon and you attacked Angel." Giles was still holding the phone and staring at her in disbelief as if he was trying to find some truth in her face that expained the impossible. She smiled back at him in a knowing way before responding.

"I'm not possessed by a demon Giles, don't worry, it was my fault, kinda, I got talking to someone before I got there and I told them how betrayed and humiliated I felt, after I had cooked Thanks Giving dinner for everyone despite impossible odds after what has been a really hard year and its the first one I haven't spent with either of my parents and managed to cook it all quite well and serve it on time only to have the whole day ruined because all of my friends that I have loved, cared for, bled for and fought for thought absolutely nothing of lying to me, betraying me and conspiring against me," she was frowning now and silenced Giles's protests with a wave of her hand. "I know you did it for my own good, you do a lot of things for my own good. But back to my story I told this person that I wished I could just tear the bastards eyes out for the way he made a fool of me that day and all the other days and I guess it must have been a vengeance demon i was talking to because the next time I saw Angel I just... let it out, all the rage, the bitterness, the pain he caused me all these years and you know what? I don't regret it. Not even a little bit, for the first time in too many years I feel ...free." Giles continued to stare at her in disbelief as Spike stared at her in wonder, who was this incredible woman and what had she done with the little girl he had taunted outside the college a few weeks ago, who was miserable over some idiot college boy?

She then disappeared into the kitchen and began to unpack the bags she had; wheatabix and new containers of blood made an appearance as well as many produced foods she had  
not eaten in decades. There was a lot she needed to do, a lot that needed to be prepared for but right now she just wanted to enjoy this wonderful reprieve from the struggle and fighting that her life had been.

 

"Buffy this is very serious, you were under the influence of a vengeance demon's curse you could still be suffering from the after affects of it." Giles was studiously polishing his glasses and the sight of it nearly made her tear up at the familiarity of it.

 

"They prefer the term Justice Demons," she said with a little knowing smile. "It's alright Giles, I'm not possessed I'm just...unrepentant." With that she took her leave and left the small apartment, it was too painful to be around him, she had only gone there to make sure he would be there, to see him again after all these years, he was so beautiful. She had thought she had been prepared for seeing him, sort of, she had known it would be painful but this had been different, she had had to turn away more than once to hide her tears. Having Giles there hadn't helped, despite all the times he had betrayed her trust he had always done it for what he thought were the right reasons and she had always forgiven him until she couldn't anymore, somehow that always made it worse, if he did it because he was evil or selfish or cruel then she could hate him as he deserved but he did it because he loved her, he made decisions for her, without consulting her; how did that make her different from a puppet being directed by strings? Or a weapon like Quentin Travers had said she was? She walked away from the apartment and tried to remember the story of Pinnochio, it had been so long ago that she had read children's stories, did this make him Gippetto? Did that make her the magical piece of wood trying desperately to act like a 'real boy' enough that he could become the thing he pretended to be. The metaphore struck a little too close to home and The Slayer had to sit down as a wave of nausea hit her and she laughed and laughed, gripping her sides as waves of hysteria came over her. Thats exactly what she was, all those early years of feeling miserable at her own inadequacy and of feeling different from all the 'normal' children. No blue fairy for her, sacrificing herself for others hadn't led to a happy ending where she turned into a 'real boy'. Rolls and rolls of laughter came off her and then she looked up the dark shape of the Mohra demon that she had nearly forgotten about.

 

"Care to share the joke?" He asked in a companionable way.

 

"I just realsed I'm Pinnochio." She replied with a giggle. If her response worried him then he didn't let on.

 

"May I sit?" He gestures to the seat next t her and sat down at her nod, "There are rules to what you have done, all magic comes at a price and I'm afraid you will have to bear the burden of this price alone." She looked up at him in confusion at his words.

 

"But if I tell my friends-"

 

"You can't tell anyone, time is lateral and it heals any shifts in itself, by sharing future events with them you risk losing your memories of them or worse. You can tell no one of what you have suffered or what is to come or your memories will be erased." His words were stern but kind, she stared down at her feet for a few moments before looking up at him.

 

"If I begin to say too much, which I might some day, by accident, will there be any sort of warning mechanism?"

 

"You will know if you begin to say too much, the pain will be exquisite, I will be here to help you in any way I can, The signs said I had to regenerate the vampire with my blood and warn him of the armies that were coming before sacrificing myself for the greater good but I saw something in that room Chosen One, a great energy surrounds you and I have memories of a day and a sacrifice that never came to pass, we will stop whatever evil is coming to destroy this world and others together if you would let me help?" He asked hopefully and The chosen One smiled, happy not to be alone anymore.


	2. PTSD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adjusting isn't easy.

Buffy was strapped to a bed and her muscles hurt as if she had just had a bad fit, she had had a few fits over the years from different drugs or poisons she had taken; when society fell the breweries and distilleries didn't last for much longer, the brief reprieve from the hopelessness of existence that drinking could provide was only possible when precious food resources were still being used for making the liquid gold. That's what the old man brewing cider from apples and fruits had called it when he poured her a glass and held it to the light. Liquid gold, ironically gold then had next to no value. He had been nice, they had sheltered in his brewery for many nights surrounded by empty copper vats like the tombstones of a decadent age that was dead and gone. She had never done drugs in her old life, she had been a good girl, the only time she stepped out of line had been when she had a few beers to mend her injured heart, more injured pride than heart but the beer helped all the same, her friends never let her forget it. Every party, every social event they made cutting comments about 'beer bad' and so to make them happy she drank soda while they stood around and drank beer socially while she was the butt of the jokes. It was years later as she sat around a fire sharing a spliff with some survivors that she had travelled with for months that one of them got sick and her friends took care of her and later never berated or chastised her for her behavior that finally Buffy asked Claire 'why don't you tell her not to smoke so much? Tell her she's making a fool of herself?' Claire gave her a funny look.

'She's my friend if she can't cut loose and have a little fun when she knows I'm here to look after her then when can she?' 

Pills were another way to reach that blissful oblivion that everyone craved in those dark days; uppers to keep her awake all night fighting and downers to help her sleep during the day, eventually they became to rare and precious that good little Buffy Summers had to swallow her pride and disgusted at her own behavior she had gone to the vampires, she made it to Colorado before swallowing her pride and going to a vampire suck house. The Turok Han attacked at night; at first irregularly and in small parties but as the pockets of humanity were extinguished and killed their attacks became more frequent, normal vampires and humans came together and formed alliances in these pockets; protection for blood, blood for fighters. It worked well, vampire venom has certain opiate properties to put their victims in a docile state, it numbs pain and can be pleasurable sending the bitten on a pleasant trip to never never land, she had often seen the injured and dying receive these bites on the barricades the same way they would have received morphine or medicine in the good old days as the venom also carried several antiseptic properties. It had been so long ago but she still remembered the betrayal when the man she had been seeing left her for something he needed, neither had realized then that he had been an addict looking for a fix. Ever since he had been on Maggie Walsh's pills whether they were mashed into his food or in the vitamins he took every morning. He was an addict who needed a fix and never dealt with his addiction, if only they had realized his happy mood when she saw him months later after he rejoined the army was not a natural state but chemical, if only she had opened her eyes and seen; all those soldiers, every one of them was now being fed Maggie's wonder food and her vision was realized long after her death with an army of mentally and physically superior soldiers, unfortunately it was not consequence free. 

But that was the past and she had shed enough tears for all those years, now she was strapped to a gurney in a white room that smelled faintly of bleach, she stared at the ceiling as she tried to slow her heart beat by steady breathing, she could get it down to twenty beats a minute in her future body but she was sure that was something to do with being the slayer. 

"Ms Summers?" A short man with glasses and a bald head asked, he wore a white lab coat and had a clipboard "My name is Dr French, do you know where you are?"

"Hospital I suppose, Sunnydale Memorial maybe?" She asked uncertainly.

"That's right you were admitted last night, can you remember what happened?" Buffy paused and looked up at the ceiling again, testing the strength of her restraints.

"I was in my dorm, I share it with my friend Willow I went to the bathroom, I woke up and I went to the dorm bathrooms...then I saw the mirror." she sighed and shifted uncomfortably on the bed. "I saw something in the mirror, now I think it was my reflection but at the time I thought..." I was half asleep no I thought it was the First wearing my face and taunting me as she once did, people said the First was a He but I almost always saw her wearing women's faces and more often than not my own, I really had thought it was her looking at me, "...I thought it was some kind of demon, I was afraid so I hit at it."

"You punched it?" He asked with a kindly look, she glanced down at her hands and saw how bandaged they were. 

"I punched it and all the other mirrors." Buffy finished, her face reddening in embarrassment.

"But that's not all you did is it?" He asked knowingly.

"I..I didn't want to forget, they told me I might forget and I was scared so I had to write it down."

"What did you write down Buffy?" The doctor had pictures, he had been called urgently last night about this case the paramedics who found her thought she had been attacked and the pictures they took of her cuts were grotesque to look at. He had met many young people like Buffy Summers who for one reason or another sought release from self mutilation but the number of controlled cuts all up her legs had made him gag, how could she have made such symmetrical markings to her skin without cutting an artery? There were so many of them. The paramedics had found her under gushing shower water, it had washed away the blood and the coldness probably accounted for the wounds sealing up so quickly.

'Everything," she replied "I wrote down everything so I wouldn't forget, I think I sort of blacked out from the time I started smashing mirrors because the next thing I really remember was sitting in the shower cubicle with the water washing away the blood and I was writing into my skin."

"Have you ever hurt yourself before Buffy?" A comprehensive patient history can be very helpful in a diagnosis.

"Emm I've always done combat sports; Krav Maga, kick boxing, I never thought about them as being self abuse but I always felt better when someone hurt me or hit me, even when I was hitting them back." The doctor nodded understandingly, "I know I look small but I can take a lot of pain...sometimes it feels like all life is pain and ..I don't know making it physical makes it easier to handle? I guess." She was crying now and the tears flowed freely, Doctor French asked her other questions, he believed her when she said had taken drugs in the past but was clean now, they had rushed her blood tests the night before and could see her blood was clean but poor girl the strange cuts she had carved into her skin would be with her for life.

 

********

Willow had been hysterical when she had called Giles and he had rushed to the campus in time to see a sedated Buffy being wheeled away on a gurney. First she had assaulted Angel in what he said was a completely unprovoked attack and then she had broken every mirror in her dorm's communal showers. What had come over her? What was happening to his beautiful girl? There were some students standing around gossiping and some were crying, he wanted to shout at them that they had no need to cry, nothing had happened to them but then he got a glimpse of the shower rooms; she had been barefoot when she broke the mirrors. He felt like he was going to be sick, he couldn't get to Buffy around the paramedics and Willow seemed to be in a much more volatile state now, as she cried into his shoulder a glass on her bedside table exploded, telekinesis is famously linked to emotions.

********

Joyce phoned Giles from the hospital but he had stayed at the dorm so the machine got it, Spike was chained up in the tub when he heard the distraught woman's massage. The doctors were chalking it up to PTSD because of all the terrible things that had happened at graduation and they wanted to section her which apparently meant keeping her in for a month. Normally Spike wouldn't care in the least but Joyce was a fine lady who had insisted the heart broken vampire who had sobbed into the hot chocolate she made him was given a love spell by her mortal enemy. He sighed in resignation and took off his shoe to get the soap with his toes. For all the chains were strong and dark with rust they could still be slipped off his wrists if he was creative enough. Ninety minutes later a tearful Joyce was still sitting in the long green hallway of the mental ward when a slightly singed vampire with a blanket over one arm asked her if she'd like a hot chocolate.


	3. Noticeable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They wait to discharge Buffy from the hospital

When they arrived at the hospital Giles, Willow, Xander and Anya were not allowed past the reception desk of the mental ward as it was 'family only' that were allowed further inside so they waited in the uncomfortable chairs for there to be any news. Xander was there because Willow had called him and Anya was there because Xander was, Giles wished they would leave or atleast stop their nonsensical talk.

"You shouldn't worry, mental homes are much better nowadays," Anya said in an effort to stop Xander's fussing, she liked to comfort him and show what a good girlfriend and human she could be. "It's some of my best work really, it all started when I got to know this man called Jung, his wife was feeling particularly neglected because of his devotion to his work and they lived on the grounds of one of his clinics. The things those poor women had to suffer; hysterectomies and lobotomies done with no an aesthetic so they were awake for every-"

"Anya!" Xander suddenly shrieked in horror. Anya looked around in confusion at them wondering what she had said wrong, she was just trying to explain how much better things were now.

"Well she and I worked on her wish together and he revolutionized how women with mental health issues are treated thanks in no small part to the fact that he saw the world through their eyes every night when he slept." She looked around at them uncertainly, it really had been her best work because it had not only gotten Emma the sort of caring husband she deserved but it had also opened Emma's eyes to the medical world around her and she had become important in helping him to further his career and therefore the widespread use of his treatments. Anya had liked Carl, for all that he had been a man, but he wasn't really a neglectful husband just someone who became so deeply buried in their work that they missed everything going on around them, he had also called her an 'interesting specimen' which she had found quite flattering. Giles and Willow were looking at her as if seeing her for the first time, it had obviously never occurred to either of them what affect a vengeance demon focused solely on righting the wrongs against women could have had on women's emancipation over the past millennium. 

"Anya, maybe enough stories for now, ok? We're all just a bit freaked out and besides Buffy isn't crazy, she was attacked by a demon or something." Anya looked at Xander with a raised eyebrow and then around at the other two but held her tongue, Slayers were a bit of an enigma and while she had known a few she had never gotten as close to any of them as she did to Buffy but even she, without her demonic powers, could still see the strain the girl was under on a regular basis. They waited for another ten minutes before Willow huffed and suggested they use a deflection charm to get past the guards and see what was happening, to Anya's surprise she had one ready in her bag, she just carried things like that around with her. How odd and a little irresponsible, she tried to remember how she had behaved when she was young and doing magic for the first time. It was different, their magic was incorporated with their faith in the Gods, Frigg had been her favourite; all powerful, goddess of marriage and fidelity, magic was done in designated places at designated times of the year and in accordance with the lunar cycles but Willow just seemed to do it anywhere and at any time with no particular faith in any God or Goddess.

She did something to the charm to stretch its influence over all of them and they snuck past the front desk and through the door to another corridor where they found Buffy's mother sitting only ten yards away drinking hot chocolate from a paper cup with Spike.

"Spike what the hell are you doing here?" Giles fumed, terrified that some harm would come to Joyce but she didn't look up and although Spike looked up and looked around he didn't seem to see them and settled back into his chair next to her.  
"For bloody sake, Willow you can reverse the charm now." He said in a frustrated tone, damn the woman on the front desk, he should have been back here all this time not trapped on the other side of the door while Spike was with Joyce alone, God knew what he had been saying to her.

"...So and I only heard this second hand so I might be wrong on some of the details but apparently these two vamp brothers, nasty pieces of work, killed whole towns of people during the Mexican wars, they went to the school planning to corner Buffy and maybe threaten a few of the students, get her alone, you know the basic 'using humans as shield and hostages to get the slayer' set up. Thing is none of the people in the school even looked at them and they were in full vamp face, everyone was possessed and digging up some big monster and even when they cornered her and told her they're evil plan and everything they could kind of tell she was distracted and only half listening to them and the way I heard it she threw one of them at this big, buried demon and he got eaten then she got eaten too but, from the inside, she killed it and dug her way out. Well the other Gorch brother he could see this was something he really didn't want to get messed up with so he took one look at her covered demon stomach acid and took off." Joyce was laughing now despite everything, William really was a good story teller and she remembered that day, Buffy had never told her about what that 'gas leak' had really been. Even though she had known for over a year about Buffy being the Slayer she was hearing a lot of things anew from Spike. The story about Halloween had been particularly funny and she could forgive him for trying to kill Buffy, the way he told it half of Sunnydale's citizenry had tried that at one time or another and besides he was keeping her mind off her troubles as she waited. They talked some more, William (she refused to call him Spike) refused to let her brood over what was happening and for that she could forgive him almost anything.

It was another few hours before Giles and the young people were able to undo the affects of the charm and make themselves noticeable again during which time he noticed he could not touch either Joyce or Spike but if he shouted very loud Spike sometimes looked around but rarely in the right direction. Eventually Willow suggested they go into Buffy's room because maybe she would say something or do something that would help to explain to them what was happening. Anya tried to stop them saying that what a patient disclosed to a doctor was confidential and started quoting the Hippocratic oath but Willow dismissed her with a wave of her hand and Xander didn't back her up so she fell silent and the four of them went into Buffy's room where she was just waking up and a short man in a lab coat was asking her questions. Needless to say Anya felt vindicated, a lot of what Buffy talked about was very personal and obviously not stuff she had ever shared with her friends but the thing that they latched onto was the demon in the mirror. The First. They immediately left the hospital and headed for Giles's house, no small feat considering are didn't stop when they were using the zebra crossing as they couldn't see them so they had to focus once again on the problem of reversing charm Willow had used which took longer because this time Giles insisted on checking and rechecking what she was going to do in case there was a mistake, she had not appreciated the delay. Eventually they were noticeable and visible to others again and drove to Giles's apartment, they had had dealings with the First in the past and apparently it was back again. Anya pointed out that Buffy said it wasn't the First but that she had thought it was but Giles seemed determined to find a demon to kill. There had been so many bandages on her little body, so many many bandages and Giles could feel his Ripper self coming to the fore. Willow, though she hated to consider it thought that maybe what was happening to Buffy was all mental, it had been a really stressful couple of weeks what with that demon trying to eat her soul and Angel, she bit her lip, there was a spell that could help with this exact situation so she made her excuses and went back to her dorm.

********

Dr French finally came out of the room Buffy was in to meet her mother she was sitting with a young man who must be family otherwise he couldn't have gotten past the front desk, it never occurred to him that Spike had come in through the basement. He told her about some of the medication he wanted to prescribe Buffy and that he wanted to keep her in for a few days for observation. Joyce had to really argue with him on that point but finally she got him to agree to realease Buffy into her care if she signed a lot of wavers. Spike had had the forethought of bringing some clothes with him that Buffy kept at the Watcher's apartment for emergencies, (how strange things were today) as Buffy's were covered in blood. Buffy greeted her mother with an emotional hug and called her 'mommy' and she seemed strangely complacent at Spike's being there, which he thought was a bit odd considering how she had attacked him that time she had seen him in the kitchen with Joyce drinking cocoa, he smiled at the memory of her righteous fury as she wielded a wooden spoon in a threatening manner, she was dry different now, her eyes looked like she had aged decades and the smell of her congealing blood filled the room making him realize just how hungry he was, 'what a waste for all that lovely blood to have been washed down the drain' he thought. Within the hour they had done all the paperwork to discharge her and were driving Buffy back to 1630 Revello Drive, Spike safely tucked under his blanket in the back seat when Buffy suddenly sat up straight and looking around said in an oddly bubbly voice "Mom, where are we going?"


End file.
